MID-SOUTH MEMORIES
25 years ago — 1993
Junior Young, part-time panhandler, part-time laborer, occasionally stands on a street corner holding up a crudely lettered sign saying “Will Work For Food.” But Young says he probably won’t do that if the city’s new panhandling ordinance is approved because he doesn’t want to shell out $10 for a beggar’s permit. The council is expected to vote on the third reading of the ordinance Tuesday. Young figures panhandling is not a profession that requires a license. He can do it discreetly enough to escape detection, anyhow. “I can hit a mark without being seen,” said Young, 32, who has been down and out in Memphis for the past four or five months. “I don’t know anybody living on the street who will buy a license. Hell, if you have $10, you don’t need to be begging.”
50 years ago — 1968
Mary Martin will bring the week-long run back to Memphis next month when she appears with Robert Preston in six evening performances of the musical, “I Do! I Do!” The November 18-23 engagement in The Auditorium Music Hall will be the first extended booking of a tour show in Memphis since Miss Martin’s June 1-6, 1965, run of “Hello, Dolly!”
75 years ago — 1943
Memphis has helped Uncle Sam do it again! Simultaneously with announcement by Sec. Morgenthau that the national Third War Loan Drive quote of $15,000,000,000 had been oversubscribed, the Memphis and Shelby County War Finance Committee yesterday reported its goal had been exceeded by $1,243,675. With the quota set at $33,023,500, men, women and children on the local home front dug deep to send the total sales soaring to $34,267,175.
100 years ago — 1918
President Wilson is to be applauded for personally reversing a Post Office order banning the magazine “The Nation” from the United States mails. The magazine’s sin was to criticize labor leader Samuel Gompers’ mission to England in the interest of the war effort. The criticism was “seditious,” said the Post Office.
125 years ago — 1893
War is coming. It may be in the next century, but it has been imminent ever since France paid the indemnity to Germany. Now, however, the nations are like children at play. Officers of the British fleet in the Mediterranean are drinking with Italian officers. Russian nobility is being grandly entertained in France. But Emperor William of Germany is gloomily twirling his thumbs and the Austrian emperor is planning some sort of headache for the British Army.